Happy Monday, everyone. Did you catch last night’s NBA Finals game? What an incredible series this is! (Go Cavs!)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

According to a new report from The Information, Facebook has just ditched its plans to spend as much as $1 billion to build and launch a satellite to provide Internet service on continents such as Africa. Facebook’s decision follows a pull-back by Google regarding a big investment in satellites. More here. (Subscription required.)

Apple‘s eagerly anticipated Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off at 10 a.m. PST. Among other things, Apple is expected to finally reveal its new streaming music service and to introduce tools that provide app developers with deeper access to the Apple Watch. The Verge already has a live blog up and running here.

—–

The Opportunity: Servicing the On-Demand Service Worker

While consumers wade through the ever-ballooning list of brands wanting to wash their clothes, clean their homes, park their cars and deliver them dinner, a newer crop of startups has begun catering to the needs of those contract workers who make the on-demand economy possible.

They’re smart to be zeroing in these independent contractors. On-demand employees represent a huge and growing wave of people who now operate as free agents, with the freedom and flexibility — and often instability — that’s part of life without a corporate parent. In fact, Intuit has somewhat famously predicted that fully 40 percent of U.S. workers will be “contingent” workers by 2020.

Patricia Nakache, a general partner at Trinity Ventures who has led deals in on-demand companies, including Eat Club, calls 1099, or contract, workers  part of a generational shift. “Millennials are much less receptive to the monolithic education or work-experience notion that, ‘I’m going to have this job with a single company for 10 or 12 years or take all my classes from one-four year institution,’” she says. “They’re really beginning to question the boundaries of those experiences.”

And VCs have begun meeting with companies that cater to them.

For example, Homebrew cofounder Satya Patel points to several companies that hope to serve the most immediate needs of contract workers — which, in most cases, is frequent and steady work. Peers, for one, a San Francisco-based, still-in-beta startup launched by RelayRides founder Shelby Clark, wants to make it easier for people to find, compare and manage on-demand work opportunities. (It also points them to tax, financial and legal resources.) Kung Fu, an eight-month-old San Francisco-based company, is similarly building a platform to help people earn income based on their location and skills.

“I definitely think there is a major opportunity” here, says Patel.

Nakache is meanwhile seeing more startups approach contract workers from specific service angles. One such group are applicant tracking systems startups that — unlike predecessors catering to larger companies — are designed for batch processing. OnBoardIQ, an eight-month-old, San Francisco-based outfit, is among the newest startups trying to streamline the process hiring hundreds of people quickly. Playbook HR, a 10-month-old, San Francisco-based company, also began life as an applicant tracking system (though, sorry investors, Intuit acquired it in March).

According to Nakache, WorkPop, a year-old, L.A.-based company that’s been building a marketplace for hourly workers to find food and retail jobs (and which Trinity has backed), is beginning to eye the category, too.

A separate group of companies has sprung up around background checks. One of them is year-old, San Francisco-based CheckR; another is three-year-old, London-based Onfido. While background checks are nothing new, the industry hasn’t traditionally needed to act quickly or process large numbers of people at once; meanwhile, newer companies are only too happy to do both, even if their predecessors aren’t readily ceding the territory. (Uber, the ride-hailing company, uses Hirease, a 13-year-old, Southern Pines, N.C.-based company, to vet its drivers. Competitor Lyft similarly uses a more established company, 40-year-old, New York-based SterlingBackcheck.)

Yet there are other types of companies catering to the specific needs of contract workers.

Don’t be surprised to see more shift-planning startups like five-year-old, San Francisco-based ShiftPlanning and four-year-old When I Work in St. Paul, Mn.

Payroll startups that make for contractors to get paid are also springing up, from four-year-old ZenPayroll in San Francisco, to 1.5-year-old Tiempo in Sunnyvale, Ca.

Of course, healthcare — which most contract workers don’t receive from their employers — may represent the biggest opportunity of all. Among the startups beginning to eye the space: two-year-old, San Francisco-based Stride Health, a health insurance recommendation engine that’s targeting the needs of small businesses and sees 1099 workers as a potential source of business.

There are so many startups beginning to target 1099 workers, in fact, that Nakache says Trinity has yet to pull the trigger on a related investment. She doesn’t expect it will be long, though.

“We haven’t found quite the right fit for the stage at which we invest,” she says. “But it’s safe to say that we’re actively looking and actively engaged in the sector. We have a lot of companies on our radar screen.”

—–

New Fundings

AmnioLife, a two-year-old, Gainesville, Fla.-based research and development organization focused around “placental-derived technologies,” has raised $833,000 in Series A funding led by Fountainhead Investment Partners. More here.Colabo, a five-year-old, San Carlos, Ca.-based company whose software platform provides marketers with self-service analytics, has raised $7 million in new funding led by Marker LLC, with participation by Kaedan Capital and earlier backers Paul Maritz, Ray Rothrock, and The Hive. The company has now raised $10.5 million altogether, shows Crunchbase. VentureBeat has more here.

Delivery Hero, the four-year-old, Berlin-based takeout food ordering service, has raised $110 million from two unnamed, U.S.-based “public market” investors at a post-money valuation of more $3.1 billion, says the company. That’s roughly triple the nearly $1 billion in equity that Delivery hero has raised so far — $600 million of it in 2015 alone — including from Insight Venture Partners, General Atlantic, Point Nine Capital, Holtzbrinck Ventures, Kite Ventures, and Rocket Internet. TechCrunch has the story here.

Jimdo, an eight-year-old, Hamburg, Germany-based company that helps users create sites on their computers, smartphones, or tablets, has raised €25 million (roughly $28 million) from the growth equity firm Spectrum Equity. The company, which also has offices in Tokyo and San Francisco, had previously raised just €500,000 in outside capital. More here.

Luxury Retreats, a 16-year-old, Montréal, Quebec-based marketplace for people to list and find high-end homes for short-term rentals, has raised $11 million in Series B funding led by earlier investor iNovia Capital. The company has now raised $16 million altogether. TechCrunch has more on the company (and the broader trend of high-end home rentals) here.

Menlo Security, a two-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based security company that isolates all web and email content in the cloud before it reaches an endpoint to eliminate the threat of advanced malware, has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with participation from General Catalyst Partners, Osage University Partners and Engineering Capital. The company has now raised $35.5 million altogether. More here.

Skeleton Technologies, a six-year-old Estonia and Germany-based company that makes high-performance ultracapacitors for transportation, industrial and grid applications, has raised €9.8m ($10.7 million) in Series B, including from Harju Elekter Group, which owns electrical equipment manufacturing plants in the Nordic-Baltic markets, and UP Invest, one of largest investment firms in the Baltic region. The company has now raised $18.9 million to date, shows Crunchbase.

Spero Therapeutics, a year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based company that’s developing drugs to combat drug-resistant bacteria, has raised $30 million in Series A funding from Lundbeckfond Ventures, Kraft Group, Merck Research Ventures Fund, Atlas Venture, Partners Innovation Fund and SR One.

SQream Technologies, a nearly five-year-old, Tel Aviv, Israel-based company that says its technology enables customers to load and analyze as many as 100 terabytes of raw data on a single computing node in near real-time, has raised $7 million in Series B funding led by Blumberg Capital. Venture Capital Dispatch has more here.

Springbot, a three-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based ecommerce marketing platform designed for small to mid-sized online businesses, has raised $6 million in new funding led by TTV Capital, with participation from earlier investors TechOperators and Silicon Valley Bank. The company has now raised $10 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

TaskUs, a seven-year-old, Santa Monica, Ca.-based company that provides outsourced business process tasks to other startups, has raised $15 million in new funding from the Philippines-based private equity firm Navegar. The outlet Inc. has much more on the company here.

Vinli, a year-old, Dallas, Tex.-based connected car platform, has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding led by Samsung Venture Investment Corp., with participation from Cox Automotive, Continental ITS and the Westly Group. TechCrunch has more here.

—–

New Funds

Cradle Seed Ventures, a months-old, Malaysia-based seed-stage group, has announced plans to invest between $270,000 and $800,000 in promising Malaysia-based startups. The outlet e27 has more here.

Fuel Capital, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based, early-stage venture firm founded by Christopher Howard (as a longtime principal with Ignition Partners previously, he’d launched the firm’s seed-stage investment program), is looking to raise $35 million for its second fund, shows an SEC filing. The firm’s bets so far include Homejoy (reportedly in talks to be acquired by competitor Handy); recently shuttered Secret; and Layer, which closed on $14.5 million in Series A funding last month.

Tribeca Venture Partners, a four-year-old, New York-based venture firm that primarily backs early-stage startups in New York, is raising its second fund with a $100 million target and $125 million hard cap, according to Fortune’s Dan Primack. The firm had closed its debut fund with $65 million. StrictlyVC talked with firm founder Brian Hirsch last year about Tribeca and New York more broadly.

—–

People

Joanne Bradford, who joined Pinterest as its head of partnerships in December 2013, is leaving the company, Recode reported on Friday. The move comes as Tim Kendall, the company’s head of monetization and Bradford’s boss, decided to take on some of Bradford’s responsibilities. Bradford had joined Pinterest from the San Francisco Chronicle, where she was briefly president. She has also held executive roles at Demand Media, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

Google has hired Sissie Hsiao away from Microsoft to take over as director for all mobile ads, including AdMob, the mobile exchange. Recode has the news here. She is replacing her current boss, Jonathan Alferness, who is heading over to lead commerce, a role that was vacated last month when Sameer Samat left to join Jawbone as president.

India’s tech boom is luring many of India’s brightest back home from the U.S., reports Bloomberg Businessweek. India “is like the late 1990s in the U.S.,” says Kunal Bahl, Snapdeal‘s CEO, who attended the University of Pennsylvania and founded his company — now among the most highly valued in India — after his application for a U.S. visa was rejected.

—–

Jobs

Andreessen Horowitz is looking to hire a corporate development associate. The job is in Menlo Park, Ca.

—–

Essential Reads

From St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, a company formed specifically to turn Elon Musk’s hyperloop idea into reality, says it has secured the agreements needed to break ground on a five-mile test track near the town of Quay Valley, California.

—–

Detours

John Oliver toasts FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s demise by chugging a Bud Light.

Housing through the centuries.

—–

Retail Therapy

The 10 best Nerf dart blasters you can buy right now. (It’s nearly summer, after all!)

Friday! We’d squeeze your cheeks if we could.

Hope you have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

(Note: No column today.)

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Apple predicted that 2015 would be the year of Apple Pay. But many retailers remain skeptical about the payment system, says a new Reuters report.

In more potentially bad news for Apple: Just days before it plans to reveal a music streaming service, the company is still negotiating with record labels over terms, reports Bloomberg Businessweek.

—–

New Fundings

Hi, everyone! Hope your Thursday is off to a good start.

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Dish Network is reportedly in talks to merge with T-Mobile US — a deal that would accelerate a wave of consolidation across the U.S. media and communications industries, reports the WSJ.

On Monday, Apple will begin its annual developer conference, where the company is set to release new tools for software developers to create smarter apps for its Apple Watch. The New York Times has more here.

—–

Madrona Venture Group Seals Up Its Sixth Fund in Seattle

Madrona Venture Group, the 20-year-old, Seattle-based early-stage venture capital firm whose bets include Redfin, Apptio, iSpot.TV and others, has closed its sixth fund with $300 million. Yesterday, we chatted briefly with longtime managing partner Matt McIlwain about the fund and the investing scene in the Pacific Northwest more generally.

Your new fund is the same size as its predecessor, closed in 2012. 

Same size fund, same strategy. It’s all systems go.

Is the team the same?

One of our managing directors, Greg Gottesman, is transitioning to a venture partner role. [Gottesman, who joined Madrona in 1997 and was previously CEO of the dog-owner community Rover.com] will still be involved but he’s been kicking around some new entrepreneurial ideas that he wants to pursue and he’ll be talking about them later in the summer. We also added three strategic advisors [Isilon co-founder Sujal Patel; retiring F5 CEO John McAdam; and Concur CEO Steve Singh].

You’re obviously a big proponent of the Pacific Northwest investing scene. 

I hate to use the word, but it’s really become a juggernaut of innovation in cloud, in big data, augmented reality, next-generation consumer… Related to that, the rise of Amazon and revitalization of Microsoft is attracting all kinds of talent to this region, which bodes well for us.

How are you measuring the impact of [Microsoft’s newest CEO] Satya Nadella? 

I was over at Microsoft last week getting a tour of its HoloLens [holographic goggles technology] and I was blown away by the demos. Operationally, there’s a huge difference, too. One of our startups, Smartsheet [which makes cloud and mobile-first productivity tools], had tried unsuccessfully a few years ago to integrate with Microsoft. [Under Nadella], the company has gotten traction with Office 365 and was just featured at a recent conference as an example of a great integration partner. The pace at which Microsoft folks are understanding and building integration with the startup community is significantly enhanced over the last 18 months. Satya has just set a different tone — more humble and more outward looking about what the ecosystem and customers want.

Madrona was super active last year, investing $463 million into the Pacific Northwest with its syndicate partners. Are valuations still comparatively more reasonable up there?

[Laughs.] Yes, they’re somewhat more reasonable, and the cost of living is somewhat more reasonable. We roll our eyes when square footage hits the high $30s; you [in the Bay Area] start rolling your eyes when it hits the high $70s. It also doesn’t hurt that we don’t have a state income tax.

[As important] we have a growing [well of] deep talent here. Some people have come to work at Microsoft and Amazon but Facebook and EMC and Google also now have hundreds if not thousands of employees here. We’ve funded 15 companies that have come out of the University of Washington. Our LPs are also very excited about this multi-generational effect we’re starting to see. For example, we backed Isilon [the enterprise storage company that was acquired by EMC in 2010 for $2.25 billion]; now we’ve backed two teams to come out of the company, the next-gen storage companies Igneous and Cumulus. There’s just talent all over the place.

—–

New Fundings

1World Online, a 3.5-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based company that sells web and mobile-based engagement applications, content, and analytics for publishers, political candidates, and brands, has raised $2.5 million in funding from DEFTA Partners, Altair Capital, GV Launch Gurus, and Nest HK. The company has now raised $4 million to date, shows Crunchbase. More here.

Auspherix, a 1.5-year-old, Sydney, Australia-based early-stage anti-infectives company that’s developing antibacterials, has raised £6 million ($9.2 million) in Series A funding led by new investor Imperial Innovations, with participation from earlier backer Medical Research Commercialisation Fund. More here.

Believe Digital, a 10.5-year-old Paris, France-based digital distributor and label services provider for artists and labels worldwide, has raised $60 million in funding from Technology Crossover Ventures, XAnge, GP Bullhound, and Ventech. More here.

Blend Systems, a two-year-old, San Francisco-based social app whose users create a trend (a movement, inside joke, or challenge), then nominate their friends and others to join them, has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Metamorphic Ventures, Red Sea Ventures, Great Oaks Capital, and the Al Nowais family from Dubai’s Waha Capital. Earlier investors, including CAA Ventures, Foundation Capital, Galvanize Ventures, BaseVC, and others also joined the round. The company has now raised $10 million altogether. More here.

Bolt Threads, a year-old, Emeryville, Ca.-based company that’s creating engineered silk fibers based on proteins found in nature, has come out of stealth mode with $32.3 million in Series B funding led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Formation 8 and Founders Fund. The company has raised a total of $40 million to date. Forbes has much more here.

Calhoun Vision, an 18-year-old, Pasadena, Ca.-based vision correction company whose technology centers on a light-based procedure, has raised $69 million in its first outside funding from Longitude Capital, Balance Point Capital Partners, H.I.G. BioVentures and RA Capital Management. More here.

Cockroach Labs, a five-month-old, New York-based company focused on creating an open source database designed to scale and survive disasters, has raised $6.25 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark. More here.

Electronic Commerce, a 19-year-old, Elkhart, In.-based HR platform company, today announced it has secured a $40 million majority growth investment from Frontier Capital. More here.

FourKites, a three-year-old, Chicago, Il.-based logistics platform that tracks delivery trucks, has raised $1.25 million in seed funding led by Hyde Park Venture Partners, with participation from Hyde Park Angels, Harvard Business School Angels, Bluestein & Associates and Otter Consulting. The Chicago Tribune has more here.

LaunchDarkly, a year-old, San Francisco-based feature-flags-as-a-service product (note: feature flags allow software teams to turn features on and off for users at different times), has raised $2.6 million in seed funding led by SoftTech VC, with BloombergBeta, 500 Startups, Cervin Ventures and numerous angel investors participating. More here.

Layer3 TV, a two-year-old, Boston-based “next-gen cable company,” has raised $51 million in fresh funding from earlier investors Evolution Media Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, along with new, unnamed investors. The company has now raised more than $80 million altogether. More here.

MineSense, a seven-year-old, Vancouver, British Columbia-based developer of sensor-based ore sorting systems, has raised an undisclosed “multi-million dollar” amount of Series B financing. The round was led by Prelude Ventures, with participation from Export Development Canada, Cycle Capital Management, and earlier backer Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital. The company had previously raised $8.9 million, shows Crunchbase.

PicsArt, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based photo editing app on Android and iOS, has raised $15 million in new funding from Insight Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. The round follows a $10 million investment from Sequoia earlier this year.

Plotly, a two-year-old, Montreal, Canada-based collaborative data science company, has raised $5.5 million in funding from MHS Capital, Siemens Venture Capital, Rho Ventures, Real Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. Vator has more here.

Qnergy, a five-year-old, En-Harod Ihud, Israel-based energy technology company, has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Tene Investment Funds. More here.

Sphero, a five-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based company that develops “connected” play toys, has raised $45 million in new funding led by Mercato Partners, with participation from a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company and other strategic investors. The company has now raised at least $80 million altogether, including from earlier investors Techstars, Grishin Robotics, Highway 12 Ventures, Shea Ventures, SK Ventures and individual investors. TechCrunch has more here.

TabbedOut, a five-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based mobile payment startup, has raised $21.5 million from investors in what it tells Venture Capital Dispatch will be its final funding round before going public. The company has now raised $39 million altogether, shows Crunchbase; its backers include Heartland Payment Systems, Morgan Creek Capital Management, and New Enterprise Associates.

Welocalize, an 18-year-old, Frederick, Md.-based supply chain management software company, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Norwest Equity Partners. According to Crunchbase, the company had raised at least $34 million previously, via a 2010 round from Riverside Partners.

Zentera Systems, a three-year-old, San Jose, Ca.-based cloud network company that connects enterprise applications and data from on-premise environments to private or public cloud data centers, has raised $4.9 million in Series A funding from CDIB Venture Capital, along with unnamed earlier investors.

—–

New Funds

Paige Craig, a Marine-turned-entrepreneur-turned-angel investor who has made more than 100 investments, including in Lyft, Postmates, AngelList,Twitter, and Plated, has officially launched a seed fund called Arena Ventures that intends to lead up to 20 deals a year in San Francisco and L.A., where Craig is based. He’ll also be sharing his deal information and other insights via a weekly email that can sign up for here. (We met Craig late last year while moderating a panel about seed investors’ pro rata rights. If you’re interested in learning more, L.A. Business Journal has just published a nice profile of him.)

Kensington Capital Partners, a 19-year-old Toronto-based investment firm, has held a second closing of its newest fund of funds, which now has investor commitments of $193 million (or $154.6 million in U.S. dollars), up from $160 million when it held a first close last November. Among the fund’s newest LPs: Torstar Corporation. Among its biggest LPs: the Canadian government. More here.

Next Frontier Capital, a new, Bozeman, Mt.-based venture capital firm, has raised $11 million for a debut fund that it hopes will close with $20 million. Founder Will Price tells the Bozeman Daily Chronicle he plans to fund up to a dozen companies with the capital. Price was previously CEO of a San Francisco-based ad tech platform named Flite. He also spent several years as a principal, then managing director, at Hummer Winblad Venture Partners (now known as HWVP).

Valor Equity Partners, the 20-year-old, Chicago, Il.-based private equty firm, has closed its third fund with $490 million. The firm says it has made 66 investments in 34 platforms over the years and that as of March, roughly a third of its newest fund’s capital had been committed in companies, including Addepar, Fooda, Porch.com, and Renovate America. ChicagoInno has much more here.

—–

Exits

Cisco is acquiring Piston Cloud Computing, a four-year-old, San Francisco-based startup known for its own distribution of the OpenStack cloud software stack. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Piston had raised at least $22.4 million from investors, shows Crunchbase. Its backers include Data Collective, Swisscom Ventures, True Ventures, and Cisco itself. eWeek has more here.

eVestment, a 15-year-old, Marietta, Ga.-based company that produces traditional and hedge fund data and analytics for the institutional investing community, has acquired TopQ, an Edinburgh, Scotland-based private equity analytics platform. The amount of the deal was not disclosed.  According to Crunchbase, eVestment has raised $19 million from Silicon Valley Bank.

IBM is buying Blue Box, a 12-year-old, Seattle-based private-cloud-as-a-service company that had raised at least $26.6 million from investors, including Founder Collective and Voyager Capital. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Fortune has more here.

—–

People

Jason Child, who has spent the last four years as the CFO of Groupon — and who helped take the company public in 2011 — is joining Jawbone at July’s end, becoming CFO of the consumer gadget maker. Before joining Groupon, Child had spent eight years at Amazon, serving as VP of finance among other roles.

OpenView Venture Partners has promoted four employees — Blake Bartlett, Mackey Craven, Devon McDonald and Ricky Pelletier — to partner. More here.

Mina Radhakrishnan, who was long Uber’s head of product, is becoming an entrepreneur-in-residence at Redpoint Ventures, reports Recode.

Early (and continuing) Twitter shareholder Chris Sacca finally publishes some of his highly anticipated advice for the company and where it can go from here.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who abruptly lost her husband, Dave Goldberg, one month ago while their family was vacationing in Mexico, marked the end of sheloshim  — a 30-day period of mourning for close relatives– with a moving tribute on Facebook. “[I] am sharing what I have learned in the hope that it helps someone else. In the hope that there can be some meaning from this tragedy.”

—–

Data

According to new data out of the IVC Research Center, venture capital dollars shot up 300 percent in China between 2013 and 2014, and more Chinese investors are looking to plug capital Israeli high tech companies, too. IVC estimates that Chinese investors will invest at least half a billion dollars in Israel-based startups this year and that half of the funds that raise money by year end will have at least one Chinese investor. Globes has more here.

—–

Essential Reads

Oh, it is on: According to Bloomberg, the fantasy sports company DraftKings just signed a multiyear marketing agreement with Madison Square Garden Co., displacing rival FanDuel in a contract that gives the No. 2 daily fantasy sports company its first sponsorship that includes multiple teams and a venue. More here.
—–

Detours

My 977 days with Somali pirates.

Costco’s amazing pizza sauce machine.

Serious balloon art.

—–

Retail Therapy

Now you can customize your air, too.

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

Pinterest, the richly valued visual bookmarking site, said yesterday that it’s launching a “buyable pin,” a feature that will turn some of the 50 billion images posted by users into a shopping catalog. The WSJ has much more here. The New York Times goes on to note that Pinterest won’t take a cut from each sale but rather make money selling promoted-pins advertisements to retailers, who can then insert buyable pins into those ads.

Amazon is now offering free shipping on small items to all of its customers, without requiring a minimum order. (Delivery will take four to eight days.)

Amazon has also been trying to join the mobile pay party, reports The Information. (Subscription required.) The service would potentially allow people to pay for things in physical stores by using mobile devices.

—–

A French VC Shows Off a New Fund — and Growing Interest in Europe

Frédéric Court has been a venture capitalist for about 15 years, but it was only recently that he hit the fundraising trail for the first time.

The experience went well, apparently. This morning, Court, a longtime partner with the European venture firm Advent Venture Partners, is taking the wraps off his own, London-based venture fund, Felix Capital, which he says raised $120 million in just a few months.

That might not be terribly uncommon in Silicon Valley, but it doesn’t happen very often in Europe. More unusual, Court is the sole managing partner, though he has enlisted longtime Advent colleague Less Gabb as his finance partner and Antoine Nussenbaum – formerly of Atlas Global – as principal.

Earlier this week, we talked with Court about why he has struck out on his own, and whether his debut fund says anything more broadly about what’s happening in Europe.

Why leave Advent after all these years? 

Our last fund is doing extremely well, but Advent is now a life sciences fund [which closed its newest, life sciences fund last fall with $235 million]. It’s a bit like what happened at Atlas Venture. The tech partners were going to raise a tech fund from scratch and I decided instead to start something quite new and have a sector-focused and thematic approach.

Your new theme is “operating at the intersection of technology and creativity.” What does that mean? 

It means investing in more creative businesses like digital brands, especially in markets like commerce and media, in sectors like fashion, and beauty and wellness more generally. Some fantastic global brands have been built in Europe, and we think there’s a generation of new companies to be built that are digital first – companies like FarFetch [an e-commerce site featuring designer apparel from hundreds of boutiques], which we backed at Advent and is in our portfolio now at Felix, as well.

Are you looking to fund European companies alone?

They’ll either be in Europe or have a European angle. We have one [still-undisclosed] investment in New York where we’ve been helping them expand across the pond. We did that at Avent with companies like [the mobile payment company] Zong, which we helped move from Switzerland to Palo Alto [where the company was acquired in 2011 by eBay], and [social media marketing company] Vitrue, which is based in Atlanta and we helped expand into Europe.

What size checks will you be writing?

We have the flexibility to invest from $100,000 up to $10 million in a later-stage round, though our sweet spot will be $2 million to $4 million in Series A and B rounds.

You’re announcing three companies as part of the launch. For curious readers, what are they?

There’s FarFetch. We’ve also funded the Business of Fashion, which started pretty much like your newsletter and over the last seven or eight years has become one of the most authoritative media brands in the online fashion industry. Along with [coinvestors] Index Ventures and LVMH, we’re helping the founder turn it into a platform. Our third investment is in Rad, a Paris-based online street wear brand that’s a bit like Urban Outfitters and is expanding across Europe.

This new fund closed with $40 million more than you were targeting. Are LPs loosening their purse strings in Europe more broadly?

There is capital in Europe, but the delta between the opportunity and available capital is significant. It’s still a fraction of the available capital in the U.S.

But you’re also seeing more U.S. firms like Insight Venture Partners enter Europe and take stakes in high-growth companies.

They typically come in much, much later. What we’ve seen in the past two or three years is a reduction in competition from U.S. firms because the market is so competitive in the U.S.; firms just don’t have the bandwidth to fly to Europe unless one of their trusted friends mentions a deal to them. Also, when you’re talking about Insight and [Technology Crossover Ventures] and DST [Global], they’re looking to write checks of $50 million to $70 million, and the number of companies that can take that much capital is much lower here than in the U.S.

Is Europe seeing more corporate investors? They’ve sort of filled a hole in the U.S., especially when it comes to Series B rounds.

We see some corporate money, though much less than in the U.S.. We’re more seeing local sovereign funds step in, where governments have realized that a lack of capital [to startups is a disadvantage]. One of the biggest backers is [the French government’s] Bpifrance.

Are things fairly collegial among traditional early-stage investors then?

There are firms that we know well – Accel, Index – and they were very helpful to me in raising my new fund, and in introducing me to their LPs. In the early stages in Europe, there isn’t the kind of competition you see in the U.S., while in parallel, we’re seeing the quality of talent rise in both founders and people joining startups. These will be very interesting years to invest.

—–

New Fundings

Anthem Vault, a four-year-old, Las Vegas, Nv.-based provider of retail gold and silver bullion and vaulting services, has raised $3.2 million in funding from unnamed investors. The company says it will use the capital to launch HayekGold, an open digital gold payment platform. More here.

Arkin, a two-year-old, Mountain View, Ca.-based operations platform for converged infrastructure and software-defined data centers, has raised $15 million in Series B funding from earlier backers Nexus Venture Partners and other strategic investors. The company has now raised $22 million altogether.

Atomwise, a three-year-old, New York-based drug discovery platform, has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Data Collective, with participation from Khosla Ventures, DFJ, AME Cloud Ventures and OS Fund. TechCrunch has more here.

CounterTack, an eight-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based real-time endpoint threat detection company, has raised $15 million in Series C funding led TenEleven Ventures, with participation from EDBI, Mitsui & Co., and unspecified earlier investors. The company has now raised roughly $50 million altogether, including from Razor’s Edge Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Siemens Venture Capital and Fairhaven Capital.

DataScience, a year-old, Culver City, Ca.-based company that analyzes corporate data using a mix of technology and human expertise, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft Partners, with participation from earlier investors Pelion Ventures Partners, Crosscut Ventures andTenOneTen. The company has now raised $6 million altogether. Fortune has more here.

Doorman, a 1.5-year-old, San Francisco-based on-demand package delivery company that schedules drop-offs after office hours, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding led by Motus Ventures, with participation from Western Technology Investment, MicroVentures, and VGO Ventures. TechCrunch has more here.

Entropix, a months-old, L.A.-based computational imaging company developing super-resolution video surveillance technology for enterprise customers, has raised $1 million in seed funding from undisclosed backers. More here.

FullStory, a three-year-old, Atlanta, Ga.-based platform that enables businesses to visualize, search, analyze, and react to their users’ online experiences via a script that records all interactions during a visit, has raised $9 million in Series A funding led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, with participation from Google Ventures and Atlanta investor Tom Noonan. The company — founded by former Google engineers — has now raised $10.6 million altogether. The Atlanta Business Chronicle has more here.

HWTrek, a 1.5-year-old, Taipei-based platform that pairs manufacturing experts with project creators to help deliver high-quality products quickly, has raised $4 million in Series funding led by WI Harper and ITIC. Legend Star Capital, JD.com, and the Tokyo-based venture firm Global Brain also participated.

LawnStarter, a nearly two-year-old, Austin, Tex.-based online platform for homeowners to schedule lawn mowing, fertilization, bush trimming and other lawn care services, has raised $6 million in Series A funding led by Binary Capital. The company has now raised $7.25 million altogether, including from Gary Vaynerchuk and other angel investors. Silicon Hills News has more here.

Mic, a four-year-old, New York-based media company focused on news for millennials (and formerly known as PolicyMic), has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by previous investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from media giant Axel Springer, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, Netscape cofounder Jim Clark, Advancit Capital, Red Swan Ventures and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The company has now raised more than $32 million altogether. TechCrunch has more here.

Mirror, a four-year-old, San Francisco, Ca.-based online bitcoin exchange, has raised $8.8 million in Series A funding led by Route 66 Ventures, with participation from existing investors including RRE Ventures, Crosslink Capital, Battery Ventures and Tim Draper. The company has raised $12.8 million altogether.

Mishi, a six-month-old, Hangzhou, China-based mobile app that pairs foodies with in-house chefs (it has been compared to EatWith), has raised $15 million in Series B financing round led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from earlier backer Morningside Ventures. China Money Network has more here.

Nantero, a 15-year-old, Waltham, Ma.-based nanotechnology company that uses carbon nanotubes to develop semiconductor devices, has raised $31.5 million in Series E funding from CRV, DFJ, Globespan Capital Partners and Harris & Harris Group. The company has now raised $73 million altogether, shows Crunchbase.

PillPack, a two-year-old, Cambridge, Ma.-based pharmaceutical delivery startup, has raised $50 million in Series C funding led by CRV, with participation from Accel Partners, Menlo Ventures, Atlas Venture, and Sherpa Ventures. PillPack has now raised a total of $62.75 million. TechCrunch has more here.

Purch, a 12-year-old, Ogden, Ut.-based digital media firm with a suite of technology content and ecommerce websites, has raised $135 million in equity and debt funding led by Canso Investment Counsel. The company has now raised roughly $175 million altogether, including from Village Ventures, ABS Capital Partners, and Highway 12 Ventures. More here.

Urban Massage, an 18-month-old, London-based on-demand mobile massage service, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by Firestartr, with participation from Samos, LCIF, numerous unnamed angel investors, and earlier investor Passion Capital. TechCrunch has more here.

Virtual Software Systems, a nine-month-old, Waltham, Ma.-based cybersecurity startup, has raised $2 million in seed funding from Bulldog Investors, Sequel Capital Management, and a number of unnamed private investors.

—–

New Funds

Business Growth Fund, a four-year-old, London-based outfit backed by five of the U.K.’s main banking groups, including Barclays, HSBC, and Lloyds, is launching a new £200 million ($307 million) venture capital fund for early-stage tech UK companies. The fund, which will open for business this fall, is being spearheaded by Rory Stirling and Harry Briggs, formerly of MMC Ventures and Balderton Capital, respectively, as well as Simon Calver, former chief executive of LOVEFiLM. More here.

Point Nine Capital, the four-year-old, Berlin-based early stage venture firm, has closed its third fund with $60 million. According to TechCrunch, the capital will be used to invest up to $1 million in roughly 40 startups across Europe and North America. More here.

Revolution, the four-year-old, Washington, D.C.-based investment firm formed by former AOL execs Steve Case, Donn Davis and Ted Leonsis, is raising a $450 million fund — Revolution Growth III — shows an SEC filing. Washington Business Journal has more here.

—–

IPOs

Nivalis Therapeutics, an eight-year-old, Boulder, Co.-based company that’s developing a complementary small molecule therapy for cystic fibrosis,revealed plans this morning to raise $60 million by offering 4.3 million shares at a price range of $13 to $15. At the midpoint of the proposed range, the company would be valued at $200 million. Some of the company’s biggest outside shareholders include Deerfield Management, Wellington Management Company, Tiger Partners, and RA Capital Management.

Sophos Group, a 30-year-old, Abington, England-based internet security firm, plans to raise about $100 million from a float on the London Stock Exchange, reports the WSJ. More here.

—–

Exits

Avalara, an 11-year-old, Bainbridge Island, Wa.-based provider of cloud-based software for sales tax and other transactional tax compliance, has acquiredEZtax, an 18-year-old, Overland Park, Kansas-based company that makes tax compliance software for the telecom industry. No financial terms were disclosed. EZtax doesn’t appear to have raised institutional capital. Avalara has raised roughly $224 million from investors, shows Crunchbase; its backers includeWarburg Pincus and Technology Crossover Ventures.

—–
People

BuzzFeed has hired longtime PepsiCo marketing executive Frank Cooper as its chief marketing officer and chief creative officer, reports AdAge. Cooper will reportedly oversee BuzzFeed’s creative services team, which makes sponsored content for brands. He’ll also manage BuzzFeed’s market research, business-to-business and consumer marketing, as well as work with marketers and advertising executives on forming partnerships.

Tim Cook: Apple “doesn’t want your data.” The company doesn’t think “you should ever have to trade it for a service you think is free but actually comes at a very high cost.”

RRE Ventures, the New York City-based venture capital firm, has brought aboard Raju Rishi as a general partner. Rishi joins the firm from Sigma Prime Ventures, which he’d joined after cofounding a company called Rave Mobile Security. RRE has also promoted Alice Lloyd George to the role of associate. She joined the firm last year as an analyst.

—–

Essential Reads

The California Senate on Monday approved a bill that requires the University of California to release performance data for 10 funds from Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. The bill now goes to the state Assembly, where it must win approval before being sent to the governor for his signature. More here.

Let the snooping resume: the Senate just revived Patriot Act surveillance measures.

—–

Detours

Wall Street billionaire John Paulson just gave Harvard the biggest gift in its history.

The original selfie.

—–

Retail Therapy

Mark Cuban clothes for the aspirational. We’re definitely buying the “If I Can Do It You Can Do It” T-shirt and wearing it everywhere to be obnoxious. (H/T: Alex Wilhelm)

Happy Tuesday, dear readers!

—–

Top News in the A.M.

All United Airlines flights in the U.S. were grounded this morning for nearly an hour over “dispatching information.” Wired has more here.

—–

Bessemer’s Byron Deeter on the Future of Cloud Companies

Like many venture firms, Bessemer Venture Partners provides all manner of perks for its CEOs, including a day of race-car driving and wine tasting.

Today, in San Francisco, the firm will be providing its CEOs with a different kind of perk. Together with Salesforce Ventures, Bessemer is hosting a day-long “cloud” summit that brings together CEOs backed by the two outfits to share best practices, let them learn from each other, and to dazzle them with speakers like quarterback-turned-investor Steve Young and the futurist Ray Kurzweil.

Yesterday, we caught up with longtime Bessemer partner Byron Deeter, who organized the event, and who has led deals in numerous high-flying cloud companies — including the online storage service Box, the app-building software service Twilio, and the digital signatures specialist DocuSign – to learn more.

What are you hoping these CEOs will learn today?

Part of the event is just understanding where we are. Analysts are now predicting that midway through next year, the majority of application revenue in [customer relationship management] will be cloud-based, which is a tipping point we’ve long been predicting. More broadly, we’ve beentracking public cloud companies for a while now, and based on our data analysis, we’ve come to believe this group will have a combined market cap of half a trillion dollars by 2020, up from $180 billion today — which is itself up from $40 billion three years ago.

As an investor looking to make two bets per year, roughly, where are you spending your time? What sub themes do you think are most interesting right now?

I’ve personally been most active in industry cloud and enterprise mobile, which is finally coming of age.

Industry cloud?

Industry cloud is really this notion of the “verticalization” of software and the opportunity for a large vendor like Veeva [which makes cloud-based software for the life sciences industry] or Athena Health [which provides its customers with electronic health records, revenue cycle management, and more] or Shopify [which juggles all kinds of store management issues for its retailer customers] to create dedicated [cloud-based] software for a dedicated industry group. And these models can have massive success.

And enterprise mobile? We have to admit that long-suffering Good Technology [among the first startups to provide email access via mobile devices] still springs to mind whenever we hear those words.

We founded Visto [which acquired Good in 2009 and took its name] at Bessemer [in 1996]. Early investors lost money, but out of the wreckage has emerged a valuable business. It represents some of the challenges of entering a market before it’s ready. Being early is the same as being wrong if you’re just too aggressive and run out of money before the market comes to you. Now, with the penetration of smart phones, internet usage is tipping to mobile and empowering a workforce of people who have smart phones but don’t sit in front of a PC all day. And this is just the early days of that opportunity.

How are valuations?

Privately held cloud companies are trading at multiples well above their public market counterparts. It’s about double the public company multiples for the hottest late-stage private companies, which is unusual in that private companies used to trade at a discount to public comps because they were illiquid.

Does this now years-long trend concern you?

Well, it’s very hard to lead new investments in late-stage cloud companies because many are priced to perfection. You have all these groups – late stage investors, private equity investors, crossover public investors – that want exposure to hypergrowth and that are being aggressive about it, and they’re combining to drive up valuations. In many cases, they’ve been rewarded for their actions, too, with very positive, profitable returns.

But companies are also staying private longer as a result.

I think you need to disconnect the two. Investors can invest at any stage and, within reason, still have very positive results. That’s separate from when the company chooses to go public.

Does it make sense to wait [on an IPO]? I do think companies are overthinking it and waiting too long. When they have strong businesses with proven business models, waiting to grow from $2 billion to $10 billion in market cap makes less sense. Many are staying private for the right reasons, though, [such as] to work through business model and strategic issues.

Bessemer is the largest shareholder in Pinterest. Does it make sense for Pinterest to go public any time soon?

It doesn’t. Pinterest is still refining its business model, and that’s best done as a private company, where you can take a lot of risk and not have to report on every action in a public setting.

—–

New Fundings